A Small Distance

Well, If Thursday was uneventful, Friday made up and more. I'll tell you right now I won't be telling you all of what we did and saw I'd be at this all day.

Morris showed up a little late, about 9:00, which was fine we weren't ready at 8:00 anyway. Rusty had run up to the office to give Mel some keys and his guys some instructions. The boys were taking their time getting their chores done and packing up. We finally pulled out around 9:15. Our plan was to head south to visit Morris's village then continue on to Buchanan. It is about 1/2 hour down the road to the airport and just past that we entered the Firestone Plantation. They have about a million acres of rubber trees. D'Linda and I each had a camera, the one I had told me the battery was low before we got through Firestone, I guess I took too many pictures of rubber trees with buckets, collecting stations and other interesting features. I had said that there aren't any traffic signs in Liberia, I was wrong. Firestone has private roads and they do have signs, but posted 25 mph means 50 mph, and stop means slow down if someone is in the intersection. The roads in Firestone are a little rough, but good. When we left Firestone the road to Buchanan varied, a large part of it is under major reconstruction. It Varied from smooth fresh asphalt to very rough dirt roads, with most of it being old pavement with lots of potholes.

We went for a couple of hours dodging potholes, big trucks, motorcycles, pedestrians and construction equipment. We were stopped for a while while they were doing some welding on an old one lane steel bridge we had to cross. While waiting we walked out and looked at the bridge, Rusty said he had heard about it, it was different than any I had ever seen. It didn't look well designed to begin with, and it had definitely seen better days. You could see through to the river below and the old bridge that had collapsed under it. There were cross members that had rusted through completely. The plating for the deck was very thin with large indentations from the very heavy trucks that use the bridge. The welding crew was welding patches over the larger holes. After about 10 minutes they pulled the truck off the bridge and hollered at us to hurry up and cross. D'Linda protested, she thought that we should let other cars go first, and make sure we were the only vehicle on the bridge when we crossed, but we were number one. We came to a large roadside local market and Morris said this is were we turn. Rusty couldn't see the road and went past. We turned around and Morris got out to get a motorcycle and some people to move so we could go down the road to his village. The "road" was right through the market, vendors had to move stuff back so we could pass. There was an old van in the road and we had to drive up over a big pile of garbage to get around. The road was a very rutted trail with lots of people carrying stuff to market. Morris talked to a few people and said that the "road" was in bad shape and we probably couldn't make it. Rusty wasn't convinced of that so we went on. After listening to complaints from the back seat and coming to a particularly steep very rutted downhill section he decided to turn back. I got out and guided as he backed up until we found a spot to turn around. We managed to get turned around despite more protests from the back seat that we were to close to a cliff. We drove back through the market, making them move their stuff again. We decided to look around the market, we were a curiosity because not many white people go out there. In all of our travels that day I can only recall seeing three other whites. But Blessing was the main attraction. She drew a crowd, curious to see why she was with white people and about her face. Rusty and Jamie took turns trying to explain. That is about the point our second camera ran out of battery. I went and got Rusty's camera to take pictures of the crowd. It was pretty amazing, some of the vendors we getting upset because the crowd was pushing into their space. Rusty moved out to the road, where the crowd was blocking traffic. I had Christopher climb up on the car to take some pictures of the whole thing. After leaving there Morris said that instead of going to his village we would go to his sister's because we could drive there. We headed back the way we had come a couple of miles then turned off on a dirt road and went for quite a while, and over some more bridges that drew protests from D'Linda. She would ask Morris if they were safe and he would laugh and say "oh, yes yes". At one point one of the boys had to go to the bathroom so we asked Morris if we were getting close or if we should stop here. He said it is just a small distance, so we should stop. I guess that is like our expression "a little ways". We kept going over this dirt road, sometimes fairly smooth, but mostly rutted and rough, for quit a while. We reached a little village and Morris said we could park here. He said we could walk from there to his sister's village. As we were getting ready to go a man came up and Morris, all excited, said that it was his small brother, Joe. Small meaning younger, because Joe was quite a bit larger than Morris. After walking about 15 minutes Colton asked one of the men that were walking with us how much farther, I was afraid he was going to say "just a small distance", but he said we would be there in five minutes. Fifteen minutes later we came to the village. The village consisted of 10 to 12 mud huts with thatched roofs. Some were square or rectangular and some were round. Some were decorated with hand prints, some with shoe prints and some with other designs. I asked if I could take pictures and Morris said "yes yes". At one point the Chief seemed agitated and was arguing with Morris. I asked Morris what was wrong and he said the Chief was excited to see us, but I think it was that we had come unannounced and he wasn't prepared with a gift for us. They ended up giving us a rooster and some pineapples. While there the whole village was excited to see white people, except for one small boy who was very afraid of us. The rest of the village laughed about it, but he ran and hid and screamed. Morris told us we were the first whites to visit the village. Rusty handed out glow in the dark bracelets that he had brought, I'm not sure if they really understood, but I'm sure last night in the village it was exciting.

When we left there we headed on to Buchanan, another 30 to 45 minutes up the road. Buchanan is an old town with a very different flavor than Monrovia. They had concrete roads with curbs and sidewalks. Everything is pretty run down, but at one time it was very nice. It was a little after 4:00 and everyone was hungry. We found a restaurant, but were told it didn't open till 5, but the man there said he called the owner and he would be right down. It was a pleasant place and it even had air conditioning. The cook/head waiter was an older man who spoke good English and was very appreciative of the tip we left him. He said "God bless you" when we left, and I really felt blessed. It was about 6:00 when we left and the sun goes down about 6:30. No one slept on the long ride home, except for Blessing, who seemed to sleep better the rougher the road was. There seem to be more pedestrians at night, and they do more of their construction work at night. The construction crews don't use traffic cones and light or signs and it is obvious that you are in their way. At one point we had to go down a one lane section, there was what we thought was a big truck waiting at the other end for us. About 3/4 of the way the lights started moving towards us. Rusty moved over as far as he could and stopped, I braced for what I thought was going to be a collision. But some how a very large excavator missed us. We had a flat tire that I think we drove on for a while, but couldn't tell until we hit some smooth road. That is a whole blog in its self. Rusty said they recommend carrying two spares, after our experience and seeing lots of cars with flat tires I could see why. Rusty only had one, as it turned out that was enough.

Two last things, we went through eight or ten police check points, usually you get stopped and papers checked or vehicle inspected or something to extort a bribe. We were waved through everyone, Rusty said that was a first for them. After we came out of the restaurant the boys said the rooster was dead,they each inspected him and confirmed that he was dead. When we stopped to fix the flat we noticed that the rooster was alive. I told the boys that if they ever thought I was dead to call for another opinion before they bury me.